THAMESIDE AVIATION
MUSEUM

COALHOUSE FORT, EAST
TILBURY, ESSEX.

THE HOME OF AVIATION
ARCHAEOLOGY IN ESSEX

The excavation of a 385th
Bomb Group B-17

ON
THE 26th SEPTEMBER 1943 AT 6.53hrs,TWO B.17's OF THE
385th BOMB GROUP 551st BOMB SQUADRON FROM GREAT ASHFIELD,
SUFFOLK, ENGLAND. COLLIDED IN MID-AIR OVER THE VILLAGE OF
WEST HORNDON, ESSEX, ENGLAND.

THIS
PAGE WILL BE DEDICATED TO THE RECOVERY OF ONE OF THE
AIRCRAFT 42-30364, AND THE MEMORY OF BOTH CREW'S, OF WHO
ALL BUT ONE PERISHED IN THIS TRAGIC EVENT.

Details of the
Excavation

In
the late summer of 1977 we decided to look for two B.17
Flying Fortress Bombers which had crashed in the early
evening of the 26th September 1943 after a mid-air
collision, we had the farm names of where they had come
down so this time it had been made less of a problem to
track down.

We found both aircraft on the
same day, the second aircraft 42-3290
flown by 2nd Lt. John T. Keeley, had
hit the ground and made
a hole around 30ft (10m) across.

As the bomb load had gone off
on impact we found only very tiny fragments lying around
the surface for about a ¼ of a mile in all directions,
one of the undercarriage legs had been at the farm for
many years but we searched but could not find it, so it
may have been sold for scrap. We could not excavate this
aircraft due to the fact the the crater had been filled
in with builders rubble in 1975.

The B-17 we were to excavate, 42-30364,
flown by 2nd Lt. Paul M. Yannello and
his crew, had crashed straddling a ditch, Robin Hill found
part of the radio panel still in the ditch with the
switches still intact and working. An Oak tree growing
around twenty feet (7m) away from the main impact point
bore the scares of the crash including a bolt wedged in
so tight we could not get it out.

The metal detector went off
the scale in a 7m diameter area, indicating a substantial
amount of metal below the surface.

Finds were also coming to
light on the surface including .5 calibre cartridge
cases, with a little digging by hand it was decided that
we were going to have to get in some big machinery for
this excavation.